Tom asked:

Just spent the morning listening to a couple of folks who were labour activists in the 40s and 50s. Now wondering how we organise politically under the sociological conditions of late modernity. If the class structure isn’t there to support the traditional labour movement (in the same way), what can we build instead?

An important and tricky question, no doubt; in the following I may only succeeded in rewording it…

What is it about the traditional class structure that has changed? Partly it has become much more globally dispersed, and so it is harder, though by no means impossible, to see. But the change is also about the unwillingness of people (in the rich world at least) to identify with class as a way of understanding their social position.

Marxist class analysis was so powerful partly because it offered an identity that allowed people to make sense of themselves and their political opponents, to work out what their collective interests were, and to feel solidarity with others like them. And it made sense as an identity because it also fit the material conditions of everyday life. A similar story can be told about black civil rights movements, nationalist movements, women’s movements and so on. Collective identity is always a social construction, and in movements defining that identity typically involves saying not just who ‘we’ are, but also who ‘they’ are, and how we can stop them oppressing us. Reading The Communist Manifesto is still an excellent lesson in making these kinds of claims in an evocative and powerful manner. So, while class and identity movements are often seen as different kinds of thing (especially by those who see identity movements as a distraction from class struggle), class is really just another type of identity movement, albeit one that is very directly tied to the production and distribution of stuff.

One of the conditions of late modernity, so we’re told, is the instability of identities in a world where people have much more choice about how they identify themselves and what groups they align with. In earlier stages of capitalism religion, social position and vocation were perhaps the key foci of identity, although most of that sat within a broader sense of national identity. Socialism (and, indeed, sociology) succeeded in pushing class to the centre of identity discourses. However, that was an identity that functioned most clearly worked best for the male industrial worker, excluding those outside traditional employment. Today, all of those identity discourses may remain options, but perhaps the most common (rich world) focus of identity is lifestyle as expressed through consumption. We can identify ‘chavs’, ‘hippies’, ‘geeks’, ‘eco-warriors’ and a million other tribes through what they choose to buy (or not to buy) and we typically have knowledge of a bunch of stereotypes about their behaviour and morality. Marketing and branding have successfully aligned brands with values, encouraging people to express their values through consumption choices. As an aside, I seem to have had various conversations with people about dating websites recently, which, of course, match people on the basis of ‘shared interests’. Such interests may most often be gauged through consumption choices: favourite films or music, hobbies (and their inevitable consumer paraphernalia), fashion tastes and so on are all routinely used as proxies for deeper values.

So, organising on the basis of class or vocation have become difficult because for many, a role in economically and socially useful production is only important insofar as it enables the maintenance of a particular, consumption-based identity. Or, in less sociologically convoluted terms: most people only work to buy stuff. Obvious? Perhaps. But its also a radical hollowing-out of the meaning of work compared with earlier stages of capitalism. In the late 1800s the French working classes were doing 60-hour weeks but during the regular crises of over-production their bosses would lock them out of the factories while dumping unsold luxury fabrics in the river until prices recovered. The workers would march to demand the right to work (and Marx’s nephew, Paul Lafargue, ridiculed them on the grounds that they should be demanding more leisure time). Today, perhaps we’re more likely to hear demands for ‘more stuff’ not ‘more work’ and, as we’ve seen, some would rather loot the high street than confront the capitalist state.

All this is to say that while people’s life experiences are undoubtedly determined in a large part by a global class structure, class (as economic location) no longer provides a compelling focus for identity. Warren Buffet hadn’t read the script when he proclaimed ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.’ [1] But for most people, to mangle a phrase: the greatest trick capital ever pulled was convincing the world class didn’t exist.

So, under these conditions, what can we build? The easier route might be consumer movements for better stuff. Everton football fans marched last Saturday demanding more investment in players and an interview with one of the organisers focused on the need to develop Everton as a ‘global brand’ in order to attract ‘inward investment’. A trivial example, of course, that Barry Glendenning described as ‘a march from a pub they were meeting at anyway to a football match they already had tickets for’. But demands for better stuff can at least include less environmentally destructive production and better labour conditions and the fair trade movement shows some progress can be made in this way. But that is hardly going to convince labour activists of the ’40s that there is a generation of political organisers ready to make a radically equal world. In going with the flow of consumerist identity one inevitably gives ground to those who profit most from consumption.

Finally, its worth noting that while the shift from class to consumer identities is a significant historical shift, they are both premised on the centrality of economic behaviour in defining a political collective for political action. It may seem perverse given the context of economic crises and blatant redistribution of wealth from poor to rich, but perhaps our political organising needs something other than an economic base. Could a wholehearted and honest return to ideology unite people from a range of class backgrounds in struggle for a fairer society? After all, Buffet’s comments on class war came not from stupidity but from a recognition that something ought to be done, and there is now a burgeoning ‘tax me harder‘ movement from the ranks of Europe’s elite. What would a truly radical liberal movement look like? And could there be a compelling story of collective identity that cast off the traditional ties to nation, religion or economic position?

So here’s a different question to the one we had before, just who do you think we are?

Reference:

[1] Quoted in

Conservatives in power, vicious cuts applied to the welfare state while regressive taxes increase, police violence perpetrated against the poor against a background of declining legitimacy. Yes, the parallels between 2011 and 1981 are irresistibly suggestive of a political explanation for the British summer riots.

The triggers in 1981 were ‘heavy handed’ and often racist policing reflecting long running policing policies that systematically targeted young black men whose experience of state authority would likely have been unremittingly negative. This combined with racial tensions between communities and with the deep-set inequalities of urban life where whole areas were devoid of opportunities for meaningful work. There were instances of looting and arson but the prominent images of Brixton, Toxteth and so on is the violent clashes with police. At times small numbers of police found themselves surrounded by angry youths with improvised weapons. More often, lines of police in riot gear would tackle large groups of rioters head-on. Battles would last hours and the aim, it would seem, was primarily to hit back at the police while the usual power relationship had been reversed.

This summer, after the first night of anger at the police shooting of Mark Duggan, people’s purpose on the streets seemed to be different. Rather than directing violence at police, such confrontations were often avoided as the fast moving and, at times, well organised crowds descended like bargain hunters on high street stores. Rather than an opportunity to settle scores with authorities, this looked like a rush to get free stuff, as was sometimes evident on various communications on social networks and in media interviews after the events[Guardian, Telegraph]. This difference in the character of the riots is suggestive of  a different explanation for why they occurred. As Zygmunt Bauman was quick to argue ‘these are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.’

Bauman’s contributions to the sociology of contemporary capitalism have drawn out the implications of a shift in the way in which people create and understand their own identities, which in turn frame their understandings of the world around them, their decisions about action and their identification of friends, allies, and opponents. Whereas once most people understood their identities in terms of religion, nation, social position or vocation in the present we can talk about a multitude of consumer-based identities. This analysis is understood best by clever marketer, who consciously try to create brands for products that carry a heavy load of meaning. As a result, a large portion of the value of global corporations is attributed to their brands (see Interbrand for current values.) The value of a consumer object becomes detached from either the cost of production or the utility that product has, but instead is tied to what it signals about us both to ourselves and to those who see use engaged in conspicuous consumption. Apple iThing brand construction is a little stroke of genius in this regard  - I’d be very surprised if Apple marketers didn’t come up with a list of things that the now ubiquitous ‘i’ could stand for that included identity. If we’d had the ‘myPod’ we’d have an everyday description of ownership of a thing, but by using the active, verbal form of the pronoun ‘i’ we get a much deeper signal that ‘I do Apple products’, such that ownership of the product also says something much more meaningful about the consumer , perhaps that they see themselves as technologically savvy lovers of design and aesthetics, willing to pay a high premium for apparent quality (and therefore relatively wealthy), keen on music, smart, intelligent.

So, what’s the problem with people using objects of consumption to build an identity? Intrinsically, perhaps nothing, but this trend has to be understood in relation to two realities of contemporary capitalism: first that we are inescapably bombarded with advertising so that claims that certain products are required for certain aspects of identity are familiar to people from early childhood; second that many are excluded from participation in this make-believe world of music players, cars or deodorants with sex appeal. The unemployed and the underemployed are Bauman’s ‘defective consumers’, stoked with the desire for identity-confirming objects by a lifetime of marketing but unable to grasp them by legal means. The impact of consumerism on the poor is just to make their experience of inequality much sharper; their lack of opportunity for income or credit robs them also of the primary social tools for self-expression.

This argument needs to be tempered though, and shouldn’t be reduced to the idea that these riots were simply about consumerist greed. Owen Jones made some useful observations at an RSA talk (audio here) including plenty of quotes from people involved in rioting who were directly complaining about police behaviour or about the lack of opportunity for work. Just because, to my mediated view of things, the riots didn’t look like a well targeted kick at the police, doesn’t mean that that wasn’t exactly what was intended. As Jones points out, we’re actually looking at a series of riots and each one contained many motivations. For some it may have simply been hedonistic bravado, for others free stuff and for others still a battle with police. Whatever the mix of motivations, a broader explanation for episodes of collective willingness to transcend the normal rules are demanded. As in the early 1980s, deep material inequalities and an abiding hopelessness in the face of more restrictions on opportunity and shrinking safeguards for even a basic standard of living seem to be clear precursors, generating anger and resentment on a huge scale.

So, while this casual comparison of riots is suggestive of an explanation for differences in the form of the riots, with this higher emphasis on iLooting an outgrowth of wild consumerism, perhaps the traditional explanation for the existence of the riots in the first place – an austere state exacerbating deep social and economic inequalities – remains intact.

Today’s protests will be mainly read as anger at the hike in student fees resulting from the government’s massive withdrawal of funding from higher education. Very important issues, to be sure. But the issue at stake is broader, even, than the debate over whether higher education is a public good. Refusal to pay for higher education is just one part of an ongoing, broad-ranging assualt on future generations by those currently in positions of power.

Spending on housing - set to rise faster?

UPDATE: Just been reminded there’s a book on exactly this topic, where Ed Howker and Shiv Malik argue that a Jilted Generation – those born after 1979 – has generally been very hard done by. Looks like another one for the reading pile.

There’s now a very public fuss about the BBC’s unfathomable decision not to air an appeal requested by the Disaster’s Emergency Committee because of reasons of  impartiality. So, I wrote the following:

Dear sir/madam,

RE: BBC decision not to air DEC Gaza appeal

I was surprised and frustrated to learn that the BBC have refused the request by the Disasters Emergency Committee to air an appeal for funds to help those in desperate need in Gaza.

The BBC response was that your concerns were about the delivery of aid to a volatile situation and about impartiality.[1] The first issue appears to be one on which the DEC is better qualified to make a decision than the BBC. If the aid agencies involved believe it is possible to deliver aid then they should be supported – especially because it is often in volatile and dangerous situations that aid is most urgently required. The second issue is clearly within the BBC’s remit. However, the DEC insists it is an apolitical organisation working on humanitarian grounds.[2] The simple fact is that thousands of people are newly impoverished and homeless, with urgent need for access to clean water, food and medical supplies. Regardless of the political situation I strongly believe that the BBC should take the small step of airing an appeal – along with all other broadcasters – to help relieve the suffering of these people. This action would fit very well with the BBC’s privileged position as a license-funded, public service organisation.

Thank you for your attention in reading this letter. I would be very grateful if you would reply with answers to the following questions:

1. Why does the BBC feel it is in a better position than DEC to decide on the dangers of delivery of aid?

2. How exactly would airing this appeal damage the BBC’s credentials for impartiality?

3. Will the BBC reconsider this decision?

Yours sincerely,

Dr Kevin Gillan

[1]BBC, ‘BBC defends Gaza appeal decision’ at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7846150.stm

[2] Guardian, ‘BBC refuses airtime to Gaza aid appeal’ at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/23/bbc-refuses-gaza-appeal

It might not be the biggest surprise to learn that the presence of oil in a country has an effect on that country’s political character, but its rare to see the ‘resource curse’ described as clearly as in the graph below.

Source: Bennie, Lynn, Patrick Bernhagen, and Neil J. Mitchell. 2007. “The Logic of Transnational Action: the Good Corporation and the Global Compact.” Political Studies 55(4):733-753.

N.B. The political terror scale, originally developed by Freedom House, is based on data from Amnesty International and the US Department of State’s country reports. 1 stands for respect for human rights, 5 indicates widespread government killing, torture, political imprisonment and disappearances.